


Give 'em Teeth

by AetherAria



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: (literally), Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Lizard Kissin' Tuesday (Penumbra Podcast), Multi, Protectiveness, Second Citadel (Penumbra Podcast), non-graphic injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-03 00:59:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19453123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AetherAria/pseuds/AetherAria
Summary: Arum comes home to the Keep, and his flowers are... unhappy with the condition in which he returns.





	Give 'em Teeth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ADreamIsASoftPlaceToLand](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ADreamIsASoftPlaceToLand/gifts).



> This is entirely the fault of @shorter-than-her-tbr-pile on tumblr for putting the idea of the bouquet being protective of each other into my head, and I couldn't stop writing that until I finished this. THANK YOU! <3 Also! In my head this fic is in the same 'verse as The Rite Of Movement, taking place a couple months beforehand.
> 
> Title from the song Buttercup by Hippo Campus.

Arum attempts to slink in unnoticed. Obviously, this was an attempt at the impossible. Even leaving aside the fact that Damien and Rilla are in the Keep right now for the _express_ purpose of meeting him when he returns from his short trip, the Keep itself immediately sings a joyous little greeting the moment he asks it to open a portal for him, and naturally the Keep lets him out just beside the pair of humans, lounging together as Rilla reads and Damien writes.

Any other time, this would be ideal. He has _missed_ them, despite the brevity of his absence. Today, though-

“Arum, what _happened_?”

He hunches, glaring in the vague direction of the Keep as he translates his feelings of embarrassment into those of betrayal, and then he tries to press a hand over the torn part of his cape, over the trio of gashes in his shoulder. “Nothing of importance,” he mutters, not looking at the herbalist or the knight.

“Nothing-” Damien’s eyes go wide as he sets his papers aside and practically _bounds_ closer. “You’ve been _injured_ , my lily, of _course_ it is important-”

Rilla gets to him first, though, reaching for his shoulder, and Arum instinctively skips back a step and hisses under his breath.

“I am _fine_. It is barely a scratch,” he says quickly.

Rilla raises a skeptical eyebrow at him, then grips his hand firmly and pushes the cape over his shoulder without a hint of hesitation. He hisses a little louder as the cloth catches on the edge of the wound, and Rilla says, “As your doctor-”

“ _You_ \- Amaryllis I do not require-”

“ _I_ _’ll_ be the judge of that, Arum. Now hold still or you’ll risk exacerbating it. Keep, would you bring my medical bag down here, please?”

Arum’s frill flares in distress as the Keep sings a very clear note of agreement, but he is distracted from Rilla’s steady hands on his scales as Damien comes close. He lifts his hand to cup Arum’s cheek and Arum can’t decide whether to lean towards the comforting warmth or snarl that he _does not need to be coddled_ , and before he can reconcile that, the look on Damien’s face distracts him even further.

Damien is notoriously, _perpetually_ easy to read, but as the knight watches Rilla start to clean the three wounds - clearly a claw mark now that it is unhidden by cloth, down along his shoulder and the bicep of his upper arm, thankfully not deep, and it intersects unpleasantly with the scar Damien’s own blade once left upon him - Damien’s expression is blank and indecipherable.

Arum lifts a hand on his uninjured side, lightly scraping his claws against Damien’s arm. “Honeysuckle. I’m- I am _fine_.”

Rilla scoffs, but her eyes don’t drift from his injury. Damien, on the other hand, turns to meet his eye, and Arum sees an unfamiliar fire there. Damien brushes his thumb across the scales of his cheek, presses his other hand flat over Arum’s heart, and turns his lip up into something like a smile. _Like_ a smile, but not quite.

“It seems that you had an eventful trip,” he says, his voice quiet and controlled. _Too_ controlled. Coming from Damien, it sounds toneless and strange.

Arum shrugs, remembering just in time to only make the motion with the shoulder not currently being disinfected and bandaged.

Damien slips his other hand up from Arum’s chest until he is cupping the lizard’s face in both of his palms. The heat- the touch of his humans is always soothing, and Arum struggles not to feel lulled by the attention of both soft creatures currently tending to him. His frill sinks back down as Damien’s eyes remain locked on his own, still full of that curious, compelling fire.

Softly, after a moment, Damien says, “You are going to tell me, Lord Arum, who it was that did this to you.”

Arum blinks. “Honeysuckle-”

“I would like to know,” Damien says in a low, even voice. “I would like to know so that I may make my position clear.”

Arum recognizes, at last, that fire in the knight’s eyes. He recognizes it, and he remembers that the first and last time he saw it was during their second duel, when Arum had indirectly threatened Damien’s _Rilla_ , and the knight’s expression in the dark had gone _dangerous_ for a moment before he began to call out for her. Now…

Now, Damien clearly feels that same fury on _his_ behalf. In _his_ defense.

Arum’s breath escapes him in a noise somewhere between a huff and a stilted laugh, and he doesn’t know whether to feel flattered or embarrassed or patronized or-

“I will not tolerate any creature that would bring harm to you, Lord Arum,” Damien continues, maintaining that almost hypnotically calm tone. “I fully intend to make that point to whoever it is that has so _grievously_ erred. And if it is not understood by means of my words, I believe that _point_ shall be more effectively conveyed into their skull by way of the shafts of my arrows.”

Damien’s palms still cup Arum’s face with unerring gentleness, and Arum’s heart thuds hard in his chest. No one has ever- there has never been anyone before who would-

Arum does not _require_ defending. Of course he does not. He is a dangerous creature, the greatest architect monsterkind has ever known, he wields his knives like an artist and he can take care of himself perfectly well.

… but the fact that Damien would so easily, _furiously_ defend him, regardless of all that-

“It won’t do you any good to know who it was, now,” Rilla says smoothly as she finishes winding clean white bandages around his arm, her eyes fixed and steady on their purpose. “Whoever - or _what_ ever - did this to him is almost definitely dead already. Am I right, Arum?”

Damien’s brow furrows, and he raises an eyebrow at Arum in a question.

“Needless to say,” Arum grumbles, hoping his low tone will obscure how strangely overwhelmed he feels by Damien’s intensity. “I _am_ capable of defending myself, since the both of you seem to have forgotten.”

An odd mixture of relief and dissatisfaction slips into Damien’s expression, and Rilla pats her hand on his shoulder and says with a sharp smile, “ _Obviously_.”

“I don’t- it was- would the both of you stop _looking_ at me like that?” He hisses uncomfortably, eyes darting aside though he doesn’t make any attempt to pull away from their grasps. “I am not some fragile _thing_ for you to fret over, you know.”

“Fragile?” Damien’s strange half-smile thaws around the edges, shifts more towards genuine and he finally lets go of Arum’s face, letting his hands slide gently down to Arum’s shoulders. “No, my lily, you are certainly not _that_.”

“I wouldn’t exactly call any of this fretting, Arum,” Rilla adds, passing her medical bag back to a dutiful set of the Keep’s vines. “If either of us were hurt-”

“ _This_ one comes back to us bruised and bloodied nearly once a week,” Arum says, scowling and squeezing Damien’s arm.

“My duty draws me to danger,” Damien admits, wry. “That is something of which we are all aware. But you, my lily- I am sorry if I made you uncomfortable, of course, but I find that I cannot stand the idea that you have been in any way imperiled.”

“Another monster attacked you,” Rilla says before he can respond to Damien, her eyes searching his own. “Right?”

Arum grits his teeth a moment, then hisses through them, “That is correct. I imagine you recognized the sort of claw that inflicted the wound?”

Rilla gives a single breath of laughter. “Nope. Just kinda deduced that one.”

Arum pulls his head back, wrinkling his snout. “What? _How_?”

“I mean, you’re really good with creatures and animals and I doubt anything like that could surprise you enough to do any damage,” she says, ticking points of on her fingers, “and you kind of implied that this little excursion was something to do with your work, your architecture. You didn’t really want to talk about it with us, which is more evidence of the same, and it stands to reason that if you met with anyone it would obviously be a monster, and-” she pauses, then gives an apologetic sort of smile, “and I imagine that whoever it was, they probably weren’t happy that you weren’t going to be working for them.”

“How-” Arum repeats, and then he clicks his teeth together, growling low in his chest.

“You haven’t exactly been _enthusiastic_ about building creatures and traps to kill humans these days, Arum,” she says gently. “I figured- if a monster was mad enough at you to pull something like _that_ ,” she gestures to his injury, “then they probably didn’t get what they wanted out of your rendezvous, and what they _wanted_ was probably something like what you _used_ to make. Before _us_.”

Arum’s frill flares again, distress and embarrassment surely showing on his face.

“You- is that- is she right?” Damien asks, looking quite stricken.

Arum scoffs. “Well- it wasn’t quite- it wasn’t quite so _simple_ of course, I didn’t merely- I wouldn’t say-”

Rilla stares at him, her eyebrows slowly creeping upward along with her clear skepticism.

Arum sags. “Yes. More or less.” He flicks his tail behind him uncomfortably, his eyes darting around the room for something else to focus on. “The other monster- I declined the job she wished me to perform wholesale, and if she had taken that answer as was, or even attempted to renegotiate, it would not have been an issue. However…” he trails off, growling harder and shrugging with his bandaged shoulder this time. “She was under the impression that my lack of desire to work for her, to make constructs for the purpose of maiming your kind, that it indicated that I had grown _soft_. I believe my survival - and _her_ lack thereof - speaks to her misunderstanding of the situation.” He frowns, dark and vicious. “No monster will misunderstand me in the same way again. My _services_ in that realm are no longer available, and after that _demonstration_ I believe that fact will be widely understood.”

“You…” Damien stares up at him, his expression raw. “You were attacked because…”

“Because I refuse to be complicit in your harm ever again,” Arum snaps, frustration pushing past embarrassment. “ _Yes_. The work- _my_ work has caused enough pain for the both of you already. I cannot undo the damage I caused in the past, but I can certainly ensure that I am never party to such things ever again.”

“ _Arum_ ,” Damien breathes, and Rilla gives him a grateful but unsurprised look.

“It is not some _noble_ gesture,” Arum insists, pulling back and turning away to pace restlessly back and forth, sticking his snout in the air as he goes. “I care exactly as little about humanity as a whole as I do about monsterkind, but _you_ \- you know that I- that I- that the both of you are _mine_. It would be- it would be counterproductive to pour my efforts into harming humans when either of you could so easily become collateral in the process.”

“So… instead of allowing us to come to harm, you come to harm for our sake?” Damien’s voice is shaking at the edges, and Arum can taste salt on the air before the knight scowls viciously. “If I had been there I would have run that dishonorable creature through myself. If I had only been there to protect you-”

The idea of Damien at a meeting of monsters strikes Arum as comical only slightly more than it strikes him as _terrifying_ , but it’s enough to startle a laugh out of him anyway. “Don’t be foolish, honeysuckle.”

“It’s a sweet thought, Damien,” Rilla says, taking Damien’s hand, “and I’m right there with you, but you can’t protect everyone all the time, and obviously neither of us can go marching in with swords drawn to monster negotiations as if we’re Arum’s bodyguards or something.”

That idea makes Arum choke out another laugh, and then Rilla grips his arm to make him stop pacing. He turns to his humans, and the rattling laughter dies on his tongue. Damien’s eyes are still burning, the brilliance of his love transmuted into a fierce and overt protectiveness, and Rilla- she is less obvious, but there is a tightness to her expression and a coolness in her eyes as she looks at his bandages that makes Arum suspect that she is thinking of turning scalpels and poisons onto what harmed him as furiously as Damien is thinking of his arrows.

Not terribly long ago, Arum would have pushed them away, would have insisted that they are being ridiculous and that he does not need help from _anyone_ , but the way they are looking at him-

Arum spent most of his life alone with the Keep, and in all that time alone, he never expected that anyone else would ever love him. He even convinced himself that he did not _want_ them to. The idea that anyone- that _Damien and Amaryllis_ care for him so deeply now that they are inspired to his defense… it is a strange realization. Strange, and overwhelming, but not at all unpleasant.

Arum uses Rilla’s grip on his hand to pull her closer, and Damien with her. He wraps an arm around each of them, and curls his tail around Damien’s ankle.

“You are both ridiculous,” he says, because he still can’t help himself, but his tone is warm and fond and a little rough. “What would you have done, honeysuckle, if this monster were still alive and I told you where to find them? Did you plan to run off with your bow and have a delightfully threatening chat before you finished them off?”

Damien takes a deep breath, his lip curling wryly. “Admittedly, I had not planned quite so far ahead,” he says, and Rilla snorts a laugh. She pokes Damien in the side, and he gives her an embarrassed smile before he continues. “I just felt I had to _do_ something. I simply couldn’t _stand_ the thought of anyone hurting you.”

“Ferocious little honeysuckle,” Arum murmurs, nuzzling close to Damien’s ear, flicking his tongue to tickle the crook of his neck until he laughs. “ _There_ is the monstrousness I saw in your eyes.”

Damien laughs harder, and then he presses his lips to Arum’s cheek, wilting against him. “Only the pair of you could bring out such passions within me,” he sighs. “Only you could make me feel so _wild_.”

Arum cups Damien’s cheek in his hand, lifting his face until their eyes meet. “I love you too, honeysuckle,” he says, and as Damien flushes, as Amaryllis smirks and shakes her head, Arum holds the both of them as tightly as he dares, and they are as safe in his arms as he is in theirs.


End file.
